


Bruised Fruit Bleeds Sweeter

by ghosthan



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Angst, Avengers Disassembled, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Civil War (Marvel), Civil War: Casualties of War (Marvel), Extremis, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Light BDSM, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not A Fix-It, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:14:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29692776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthan/pseuds/ghosthan
Summary: Steve and Tony meet privately to talk. It would figure that Steve’s idea of compromise amounts to Steve giving nothing, and Tony losing everything.(Or, talking turns into fighting, and fighting turns into fucking.)
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	Bruised Fruit Bleeds Sweeter

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is essentially a rewrite of the Civil War tie-in comic, _Casualties of War: Iron Man/Captain America_ , in which they meet up secretly to try to work things out during Civil War, before things get worse. 
> 
> They talk, they laugh, they fight, and they beat the hell out of each, leading to [this panel](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a8b13b613dd2ffbcc45acab9b3a27ebf/55268bca03c5e107-15/s2048x3072/d2a1c3b558a900f118c69f92d80cd4d6a28e98e7.png) of them getting dressed in silence afterwards, which inspired me to ask myself: what if they did more than just _fight_ to blow off steam? It's a little experimental for me because I don't often write explicit sexual content, and because some character choices aren't my default interpretations but I was playing with making this canon compliant. See end notes for more on this.
> 
> I ripped some dialogue directly from panel, but I have modified and rewritten a good deal of it, for the sake of keeping things sleek & sexy. Be aware that this isn't particularly happy or healthy, as I'm exploring the themes of betrayal, resentment, violence, etc., that are present canonically between Steve and Tony at this point in canon-- neither of them are their best self here, and it is not a fix it.
> 
> Please, see the end notes for more detailed content warnings, especially if you're wondering about anything I have tagged. This fic lives in a moral grey area so please take care of yourself and don't read if you're uncomfortable with this, or triggered by anything contained.
> 
> Special thanks to [Oluka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lomku) for Beta reading for me and helping to polish this up after it sat written but unedited in Scrivener for so long!
> 
> Some panels I referenced, linked for your viewing pleasure:  
> [You Gave My A Home](https://64.media.tumblr.com/5e5b1715657eedea6ee2c53bbaba5dab/55268bca03c5e107-fe/s2048x3072/0b233d8415aeaa36cea2447d22a1a2fe3f7b7e2a.png)  
> [Let's Go](https://64.media.tumblr.com/2de1223caac0bbdd2a41ae25a70b76a4/55268bca03c5e107-a9/s2048x3072/e722d605214440b95a9091ed5dc9ff2ace76f881.png)  
> [Walk of Shame](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a5b82fdd84d7d7927d2166ba33a7cce9/55268bca03c5e107-79/s2048x3072/9c71ec8d7a9d88664c1468894f4dddb4548a2dd3.png)
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://ghosthan.tumblr.com/)

* * *

The ruins of the Mansion mark the grave of the Avengers— an era laid to rest in the rubble of its own glory. Before it was a condemned building, it was his home.

Clad in armor, he has come prepared for anything. A breeze blows through a hole in the ceiling, rustling the tree leaves outside, and what’s left of the mansion creaks in the wind. Dust and splinters of wood, scraps of wallpaper flutter in a spiral and come to rest at his feet. A curled scrap of newsprint, ‘—vengers Save The Day Agai—’, proclaims what remains of the singed headline.

Tony sits in his old usual place at the long, mahogany table, now pockmarked and scorched. He leans down to pick the scrap of newspaper off the floor, the whisper of a proud smile playing at the corner of his lips. The paper all but falls to dust between his fingers.

A creaking floorboard announces Steve’s entrance. He steps inside, hidden behind his shield; Tony does not stand. A shadow darkens Steve's face. The last time they’d been this close, they had mutually betrayed each other. The sting of it lingers, the after-throb of a burn blister. 

“Hello, Steve.” Tony says, impersonal. Without lifting the faceplate, voice masked by the armor, he says, “Glad you could make it.”

They’re both in full uniform, uncharacteristically formal for the two of them alone; they used to be like two halves of a whole. A creature with four arms and four legs, a single head made of two faces. Steve steps closer, stopping short at the table. It acts as a natural barrier between them, an antique mahogany demilitarized zone.

“I got your message,” Steve says. 

“Obviously. You’re here,” Tony says, sharp. He forces himself to unclench his shoulders. He stands and steps around the table— without quite crossing the invisible line between them. “I knew you’d remember the Avengers communication protocols for when normal channels are compromised, but I wasn’t sure you’d be checking.”

Steve lowers his shield.

“You asked me to come. And I check everything,” he says, letting his gaze wander down the silhouette of the Iron Man suit, and then up again. Even with his figure invisible underneath layers of armor, Tony feels vulnerable and swallows, as though Steve could strip him out of the armor with his eyes alone.

“You weren’t the least bit worried it might be a trap?” 

“No,” Steve says, dismissive, “You wouldn’t.”

Tony makes a face, and Steve must sense his disbelief. “You wouldn’t here,” Steve corrects himself, sounding certain.

It would be fair for him to assume the worst; the last time Tony asked Steve to meet, it had been under dishonest circumstances, and it had devolved rapidly into violence. Tony had received his penance swiftly, though; Steve had been quick to return the favor, an EMP hidden in a handshake. Perhaps a well earned betrayal, but that hadn’t taken the sting out of it.

Not here, indeed. Reminded of their place, Tony glances around. “No, I wouldn’t. I have other aims, today.” 

“And what aims are those? More noble, I hope.”

A damaged portrait of the Avengers hangs sideways from a nail on the wall, a tomb marker: here lies your past, may you never come so close to happiness again. Requiescat in pace. 

“No one knows we’re here,” Tony assures him, pacing in the other direction and looking pointedly past Steve. He goes to the wall where that portrait hangs, ash swirling around his feet. It’s a nice picture. Steve and Tony standing beside each other in uniform, Tony’s old model armor a golden emblem of simpler times. They were smiling as though they were trying not to laugh at some private joke, shared only between the two of them.

The backs of their hands had been touching; nobody had noticed—at least, no one had said anything. Steve had been mad after the fact that Tony had touched his hand just at the moment the shot was taken. It hadn’t been about the touch itself, he’d tried to explain; Steve knew that it would be too innocuous for anyone to notice if they weren’t looking for it. It was about Tony seizing some sense of control away from him, and he didn’t like feeling vulnerable. 

He’d felt exposed.

He’d never meant to upset Steve, and trying not to step on Steve’s reaction, Tony had shoved down the feelings of shame that bloomed up inside of him. It was stupid. He had gotten a silly thrill out of having some visual token of their secret relationship, whatever it was— something concrete and real to prove to himself it existed.

At first it had been a point of contention, resentment and unaired anger brewing until it exploded into a yelling fight. Then, they broke the headboard of Steve’s bed and dented the wall behind it, making up. Tony had discretely hired someone to re-wallpaper the room while the other Avengers were away. 

“After all we’ve been through,” Tony says, reaching out to straighten the picture, “I think we owe it to each other to try and work things out.”

It goes unsaid that it may be for the last time— like a divorced couple forcing strained civility at the custody trial, for the sake of their family. The stakes are higher; the nation teeters on a precipice, the SHRA a catalyst and countless lives hanging in the balance.

The glass of the frame is cracked, but somehow remains in one piece. The Avengers have scattered, and several faces from the photo have been wiped from the face of the Earth. He touches the glass and the crack grows under the lightest tough, almost imperceptibly, hair fractures blooming. 

Tony suddenly feels nauseous. He leans forward, resting his faceplate against the wall with his back turned to Steve. Thinking of all they have lost reminds him only of what they could lose yet, and he can’t stand to look at him with such a thought in mind.

He likes to think it won’t go that far because he won’t allow it. The truth is darker, a lack of faith in himself, a conscience already long stained with spilled blood, and an unshakeable devotion to doing what’s right— at any cost. There are teeth inside of him that good people don’t have, he’s made different. It won’t be his first time being the monster. When there’s an impossible decision to be made, Tony is the one to act while all the noble freeze. Where a good man hesitates, Tony pulls the trigger. 

“Don’t you think it’s too late for that?” Steve says, “I’d say we’re a little past working things out.”

He’s the keeper of his own hell— both the devil stoking the flames and the sinner, burning. 

“Maybe. We don’t know how much worse this gets. If we could stop another tragedy before it happens—”

“Like what happened with Bill?” Steve says, icy. 

Tony tastes bile in his mouth and he whirls around on Steve.

“You started that fight. I wanted to talk. Remember? I practically begged you,” Tony said. Steve licks his lips and shakes his head; Tony can practically read his mind— Tony, Tony, what a fucking disgrace. One thing they can agree on: Tony had begged.

“Your man killed him. That’s what happened.”

Maybe, Tony thinks.

“No,” Tony says, and he’s starting to sound desperate despite his best efforts. He’s never had the luxury of second guessing himself except alone during sleepless nights. Steve doesn’t understand how Tony could act without being sure of himself— how he could live in the grey area of doing the right thing the wrong way. There will be time to loathe his moral failures after he’s achieved his ends, by whatever means necessary. 

Steve only scoffs. “Sure. You always remember things the way you want to. Whatever you need to sleep at night.”

This is devolving faster than he’d anticipated, and despite his anger, he knows this is the only chance they’ll have to talk before this plays out on another battlefield.

“As if I sleep.”

“No?” Steve says, eyes dark, “So you know, then, deep down, how wrong this is? Too guilty to sleep?” If only Steve knew how correct he is.

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

Steve looks at Tony like he’d like for him to beg again. He will never understand the stakes, not like Tony. Cursed by the privilege of being so self assured, so self righteous, Steve will never get how it feels to be forced into becoming the villain for a higher cause— he always dies the hero.

“You are pathological. I don’t know what I was expecting,” Steve says, “To think that I defended you, you know. Even now. There are people who hate you more than you’ll ever know, people on my side. But they’re right about one thing. When you get something in your head, you don’t seem to care who you take down on your way to get it.”

Tony isn’t oblivious to what people think of him, but it’s a special kind of hell hearing it out of Steve’s mouth. 

Fuck his moral high ground, naive little boy playing the wise old centurion. Fuck him and his broad chest and his proud chin, held high. Fuck Steve for looking down on Tony for being willing to do what has to be done, even if it means dragging his own name through the mud for a cause. Even if it means when the work is done, there’s nothing left about him to love. Even if it means his gut feeling is to ask to be punished for some illusion of absolution from a sin he would commit a hundred times over.

He’ll always hate himself, but Steve is supposed to see the good in him anyway.

“I reached out a hand to you,” Tony says, advancing a step toward Steve, seething, “And you stuck an electron scrambler into it. You fried my eggs— watched me bite my own tongue off — when I came there to work things out. To talk.”

Like they’re doing now. Talking.

Steve doesn’t back down; he raises a red-gloved hand and jabs his finger at Tony, “After you led us into a trap, and you—”

He stops. He lowers his finger out of Tony’s face, and the muscles in his face work as he clenches his jaw, thinking. It must not be easy for him, forcing himself to take a long breath and cool down.

Steve says, “Fine. You want to talk. Let’s talk,” and there’s no fight in his voice. It isn’t a challenge; it’s an olive branch, Tony thinks. It’s hard to separate the personal from the professional, and they’re here to try and come to a ceasefire. Leave it to Steve to choose to put the past aside, for the moment. It comes to Tony as a relief, but it makes him feel small, and ugly, still flushed with his petty anger.

“That’s,” Tony says, clumsy and ashamed, blood still running hot, “I’m glad to hear you say that. We both want the same things.”

But there’s a catch. 

“One thing,” Steve says, “I’ll talk to Tony Stark. Not that mask.”

That’s the last thing Tony wants, but it’s a small price which he’ll gladly pay. Tony releases the faceplate with a hydraulic hiss as it raises. Keeping his expression carefully impassable; he thinks, what about your mask, Captain? What about the man behind that shield? 

Tony says, “That I can do.”

Cool air kisses his stubbled cheeks, and Steve blinks at him in transparent shock. Unshaven and unrested, Tony looks nothing like his usually well groomed self; he’s a haggard caricature, wearing his stress in the heavy bags under his eyes., and in the hollows beneath his cheek bones. 

“You don’t look well,” he says.

Tony chuckles dismissively. “You don’t say.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve apologizes, automatic. Tony brushes him off, but it comes with the tiniest, cruelest sense of vindication.

“It’s fine. I look like shit. I feel like shit, so.”

“You’re not sleeping.” It’s different than earlier, accusing Tony of being too guilty to sleep. Now, perhaps, Steve realizes the truth of it and doesn’t like what he sees.

“Have you?” Tony asks. Without answering, Steve gives a tight and mirthless smile. They have belonged to one another for a long time, and they’ve danced this dance before. They know each other’s quirks and little idiosyncrasies by heart. The spot on Tony’s cheek he always misses when he shaves in a hurry. How Steve carries his tension in his shoulders, and he will never ask but he likes Tony to knead his sweat-damp body until the muscles relax, in bed after sex.

They haven’t shared a bed in a long while, now.

Tony changes the topic, pacing to burn away the restless tension inside of him. He feels pulled tight, like a drawn bowstring. He steps over a fallen support beam and then smiles. 

“That wall,” Tony says, and Steve raises a brow, “That wall. That’s the one I came through. Left a nice Iron Man shaped hole in the drywall. Wasn’t easy finding a match for the original wallpaper. Remember?”

Steve doesn’t answer at first, looking at Tony with hard eyes, like any show of humor would be a sign of weakness. Finally, he says, “How could I forget?”

The corner of his lip twitches.

It had been the first time they fought, and the memory feels fondly aged, like a yellowed newspaper. The armor gleams brighter in his mind’s eyes, The perfect harmonic ring of metal fist hitting shield echoes in his ears.

Tony remembers it uncomfortably well; he had been sure that Steve had actually been the Chameleon, infiltrating the Avengers. An imposter in their leader’s place; Tony hadn’t come with plans to talk it out, then. Not when graphic images of what could have happened to the real Steve had been playing in his imagination. 

Steve, pulling his punches and Tony going absolutely batshit, with no regard for his own safety or the structural integrity of his home.

“Those were the days,” Tony says fondly, “When we could almost kill each other and then have it smoothed over with just a couple of words. I wish I could remember what it was you said— something wonderfully old fashioned…”

“I remember,” Steve says, and parrots his past self, “Well partner, I’m glad it all came out in the wash. No hard feelings?”

Tony grins as it comes back to him. 

“Of course not, Cap, God. I remember. It was so easy.”

But that’s not true; it’s never been easy. Tony has always been gnarled and dark inside in a way he doesn’t think Steve understands; even in the best of times, there’s something eating at him. It doesn’t always come out clean in the wash and when it doesn’t, it’s Tony who bears the stain. He lives in his own shadow, and because he’s a glutton for punishment, he’s fallen for the most impossibly bright light.

“Make this easy, Tony,” Steve says, voice lowering. “We’re here to talk. About what’s going on now.” Too bad they can’t stay in the past a little longer.

It devolves from there. How easily they forget what they’ve come for. 

A cold wind blows through the hole in the ceiling, but Tony doesn’t feel it. It’s becoming clear that this is a fool’s errand, but Tony can’t make himself stop. He doesn’t want to stop.

Neither does Steve. 

It gets personal; Tony makes the mistake of bringing up his own drinking, to bolster some point about accountability. Steve takes the free shot, and Tony retaliates, accuses Steve of using everyone’s hero worship of him to his advantage. 

Steve’s expression sours, and he points so close to Tony’s face that Tony could bite his finger.

“How dare you accuse me— you, you’re the one who’s manipulating people, offering them a fat, federal paycheck to sign their lives away,” Steve spits. Tony recoils; Steve doesn’t stop. 

Tony believes in what he’s doing, but when Steve goes off, he loses himself in it. When Steve accuses him, Tony crumbles inside, just barely holding himself back from apologizing. His comment about hero worship hasn’t come from nowhere. His hero stands in front of him and tears him down, now. Never mind that Tony’s a grown fucking man— never mind that he’s armed to the teeth with the full force of a government at his back, that he’s capable, that he stands on his own two feet and his own billions of dollars, yet he never seems to grow out of feeling small and ineffective.

On the inside, he's still a kid fawning for approval, and no matter how much he hides this part of himself, it feels inescapable and painfully obvious. He wears his weakness like a black eye, shameful and conspicuous, damaged goods, screaming out, go ahead and hurt me, I'm used to being hurt! Before healing must come pain. Forgiveness after humiliation, and begging, and shame. He’s wired for this, and he holds it against Steve for not knowing better even though Tony’s never told him.

He’s weak and he wishes Steve wouldn’t test him.

Once upon a time, they had found solace in each other’s arms. Tony had loved Steve, and had the decency never to say it aloud. Steve is a good man and Tony never wanted to burden him with the knowledge. More selfishly, he could picture Steve walking away from the sex if he thought he was stringing Tony along. 

The mortifying thing is how easily Tony can imagine opening himself for Steve; he's too easy to trust, and he's always handled Tony with a reverence Tony so desperately would like to believe he had earned. All the times Tony came a breath away from opening his mouth and letting all his private horrors spill out, over a sweat damp pillow. All the times he almost let him in like a lover might do.

The point is, they know each other’s bodies— in pleasure, and in anger. They always get tangled up in each other, and it’s a cycle that never ends that way Tony wants.

“I hate this. It’s mutually assured destruction. You escalate, I escalate,” Tony says, trying to maintain some semblance of composure, “Tell me what I can do to make it stop.”

“Join me,” Steve says, like it’s so easy, “Denounce the act. Help me fight it.”

It would figure that Steve’s idea of compromise amounts to Steve giving nothing, and Tony losing everything. He never even had a chance.

“Damn you.” Tony slams his fist on the table, splintering the wood. Steve looks at him and sees the beast. He turns away, impassive, as though he’s above such an outburst.

“We’re not going to solve anything here. I should go.”

Tony grabs his shoulder.

“No. We’re not done. Why did you really come?” Tony asks. His heart pounds and he’s boiling just under the skin. He balances another question within the question, hidden and explosive with a very short fuse. 

Tony’s posture says, stay back. His eyes say something else. 

Steve takes a step closer. 

He breathes hot against Tony’s cheek, close enough to be insulting. Close enough to smell his sweat and aftershave, close enough to see the dusting of light freckles across the bridge of his nose.

“To hear you out,” he says.

“Try again,” Tony says— they both know it’s hardly the truth. Steve’s lips part, and then shut, another aborted half-truth.

“I came,” he breathes, “Because you asked me to.”

“I want to fix things,” Tony says. He wonders if Steve, with his enhanced senses, can hear Tony’s heart pounding. 

It goes unsaid between them, the ugly truth: we can’t.

“Let’s try,” Steve says, something flickering in his eyes— a look of lust, or loathing. Hungry for his pound of flesh, like he doesn’t know how he’d like to have it served. If he wants blood, Tony will fight and he thinks it’ll feel good, split lips and the bright bloom of bruises. 

If he wants—

Steve grabs Tony at the waist. He wants.

“Okay,” Tony says. In the armor he’s taller and he leans down to kiss him, pushing his mouth to Steve’s. 

Steve reacts on muscle memory, after the initial wide-eyed shock subsides. There’s no grace in their frenzied kissing, hurried and desperate like they’re trying to crawl inside of each other. Tongue, teeth; Steve pushes his fingers between the plates of the armor, like he’d pry the suit apart in his impatience.

Tony lets him. He wills the Extremis to release the armor, allowing Steve to shuck him like an oyster and greedily peel the gold undersheath down to his hips. Rough, Steve pushes Tony backwards and hoists him onto the Avengers table. He throws him down, hard, and the wood cracks under Tony’s spine. His legs fall open and he pulls Steve into the space between.

“Take that off,” Tony demands, breathy and wet-mouthed, pulling away from Steve enough to reach up and tug the blue mask from his head. A cool breeze raises goosebumps across Tony’s bare torso, making his nipples pebble. 

“Better?” Steve’s hair, freed from the cowl, sticks out at odd angles. 

“Much.” Tony hardly lets him stay up for air. He pulls Steve onto him, the damaged table creaking in objection. There is ash on Steve’s lips— ash all around them,— and Tony licks it from Steve’s mouth, a bitter communion.

Steve’s body shudders under Tony’s hands, and it gives him a thrill; totally responsive to Tony’s touch, like a finely tuned machine, Steve is perfect. Tony couldn’t build something better. He likes things to react to his touch.

Tony will never stop craving this, and it’s a privilege he knows won’t last— to possess perfection by virtue of touch. Goodness untainted by the ugliness of reality, goodness so pure it could never last. It makes sense, why they clash. He eats it up, sucking the sweat off of Steve’s neck and pretending that warm glow inside him was ever his own.

Steve is hard against Tony’s thighs, still fully dressed with Tony laid out beneath him like peeled fruit. Tony bites the flesh between neck and shoulder, wedging a hand boldly between their bodies to cup Steve’s groin. It’s dirty fighting to get his way, it’s an EMP handshake, ends justifying the means. 

The pleasure-pain of the Tony’s teeth and the groping at once sends Steve’s eyes rolling back into his head.

“Fuck,” he hisses, and Tony basks in the taboo thrill of eliciting filthy language from the mouth of his idol. He wonders if Steve believed him when Tony admitted his hero worship.

“I missed this,” Tony says into Steve’s shoulder. Steve blinks at him, face still hard and unreadable, but softened with the flush of arousal. Steve answers without words, grabbing Tony’s jaw and pushing his head down onto the table, dipping low to kiss into his mouth, tasting his own flesh on Tony’s tongue.

“Me too.”

“I haven’t— ah— done this with anyone else since—”

“Sh,” Steve says, fucking his tongue into Tony’s mouth. Tony, high on it all, doesn’t listen. When Steve’s mouth moves down Tony’s jaw, sucking a bruise into his neck, Tony groans. Then he’s back on his mouth, paying special mind to Tony’s swollen lower lip.

Tony speaks against Steve’s slick mouth, “It’s not like this with anyone else. It’s always different, with you. I could never get tired of it. Does Sharon know you’re here?”

It’s the wrong thing to say and Tony knows it the second after the words come out of his mouth.

Steve’s jaw tenses and, involuntarily, he bites down too hard on Tony’s lip. Tony tastes copper, and when Steve wrenches himself away from him, his scowling mouth is red with Tony’s blood.

“Why would you ask me that?” Steve says.

Tony props himself up on his elbows, still spread out nude across the table like a novelty tablecloth. “I don’t know. Forget I said anything. C’mere.”

Steve laughs humorlessly, and he doesn’t look at Tony. “Just forget it? Easier said than done. Why the hell would you bring her up? Do you want me to go? You can just tell me to stop, don’t think you’re doing me any favors.”

“Fuck, Steve. I don’t know. Don’t you ever just, say things, in the moment?” In Steve’s absence, goosebumps rise on the skin of his bare abdomen. “I wasn’t thinking. It just came out, I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not.” Steve slides off the edge of the table, a plume of soot kicked up as his boots hit the floor. He paces a few steps away, out of the sunbeam shining down through the hole in the ceiling. 

But Tony isn’t done yet. He fucked up, and the dynamic has shifted sharply. He isn’t ready for this to be over, and unwillingly, he’s forced to see how badly he needs it.

“I’ll make you forget about her,” he says— stupidly. That’s not what Steve wants to hear. The problem, perhaps, is Tony’s choice in lovers; too many of his exes would fall for something like that, drawn in by Tony’s neediness, the power of holding his mistake over his head. 

The difference is in motivation and in virtue. Tony is merely aggravating Steve’s guilt rather than assuaging it; he’s not a man who likes to hurt people— but when Steve whirls around, staring daggers at Tony, it seems like he’s found someone to blame beside himself, for a moment.

It isn’t real but they both seem to need a break from the roles they’ve been assigned.

Tony can handle that. He has always been excellent at shouldering others’ blame. If Steve needs a scapegoat, Tony knows just how to act.

“I can’t tell if it’s an act you put on, sometimes,” Steve says, “I used to think I knew you so well, but you surprise me all the time, these days. What the hell is wrong with you.”

He comes closer. Tony hardly breathes. Yes. Be angry. Hate me. Touch me. Just don’t leave yet.

“You like it,” Tony says, hardly audible. Steve towers over Tony, who’s till laid out like a used mattress. “You need it. Anything to give you a cause. Anything to make you the hero—”

Steve grabs Tony by the throat, just hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to stop him from breathing. Behind the very real hurt in his eyes, there’s a flash of something else too—he checks Tony’s face for permission. Tony gives it to him.

He gasps, “—Anything to keep things interesting.”

He doesn’t mean a word of it, he thinks. Just the opposite: Steve would like a quieter world, he thinks. A safer world. But it’s not about being right anymore. Steve holds him by the neck, indignant, and they wordlessly negotiate the terms of their game. Tony’s pulse quickens as his color starts to turn, but he never breaks eye contact. 

Steve says nothing. He drops Tony, suddenly. Gasping, Tony wipes his bleeding lip with the back of his hand.

“Always the good man. It must get tiring,” Tony rasps, “Always the nice guy. Always so moral. Don’t you ever feel like snapping?”

“I’m not doing this with you. I can’t. It isn’t worth it,” Steve says, plucking his cowl out of the dirty and brushing the dust away. When he pulls it back on, covering his face, Tony suddenly feels painfully exposed. Alone. A raw nerve. 

Steve is always the good man, and Tony goads him into losing it on him.

“What is worth it, Steve? Is this worth it? You play it so cool, but is it worth throwing away your legacy, America’s golden boy, our national icon, because you had something to prove to me?” Tony says. He sits up and pushes Steve’s chest with the heels of his hands, hard. Steve hardly moves, and Tony pushes him again. Again. “Is it worth our friendship, God knows that ship has sailed. Is it worth the Avengers? What else will you throw away for your crusade? How far are you willing to go, Steve?”

Just as Tony hoped, Steve can’t resist the bait. “There is no Avengers,” he says, and he pushes Tony back down; his body hits the table with a hard slap, “And I’d hardly call this a friendship.”

Tony doesn’t stop. He’s lying on his back staring up at Steve with fire in his eyes, he’s just where he wants to be, right now. “How much is it worth to you? Is it worth your life? Is it worth mine?”

“Stop it,” Steve says. His eyes say something else. There’s a little masochism in his sadism, and maybe Tony’s the reverse. Hurting Steve to make Steve hurt him back. They’re no good for each other anymore, but nothing so pleasurable is ever healthy. He wants to bottle this feeling up and inject it straight into his veins.

“Stop it,” Tony mimics. He spits bloody saliva into Steve’s face, and Steve recoils, blinking. “That’s how this ends, you know. You and I destroying each other. What will it take for you to stop? Will you stop when I’m dead? Is that what you want?”

It isn’t, and Tony knows it, but the dark edge in his voice betrays just how much thought he’s has given this. It turns out to be Steve’s breaking point. Tony wonders if they’re picturing the same scene-- Tony laid in a closed casket, a mile long funeral procession, flags lowered: all the bells and whistles for the sellout who sold his soul for the SHRA.

“Shut the fuck up,” Steve snarls, and Tony can’t see much of his face behind the cowl, but the tips of his ears are crimson red, a tiny muscle twitching as he clenches his jaw.

Tony bolts upright, reaches up and grabs Steve by the hair and pulls him down, a hair’s breadth between them— nothing gentle about it, desperate. Rough. “Make me,” he says.

“Fine.”

Tony gets what he asks for. Steve kisses him, pressed flat against the table, blood from Tony’s split lip in both their mouths. Without any struggle, Steve wrenches Tony’s hand out of his hair and pins it above his head. Without the armor, Tony couldn’t get free even if he tried,and the thought exhilarates him. He’s at Steve’s mercy, and Steve’s just where Tony wants him. 

Tony hitches his legs around Steve’s waist, and Steve shoves him off, making it abundantly clear how things will go from here on: Tony will take what he is given, nothing more, and he’ll be grateful for it. Enthusiastically, Tony submits to it.

He thinks Steve’s too good to allow himself to enjoy this unless they both play along at Tony deserving to be punished, and that’s not hard to do.

And Steve has done the same for him; a long time ago, Steve touched him gently and Tony allowed himself to pretend he was special. Now, Steve rips off his dirty cowl and shoves it into Tony’s mouth like a gag, the salty tang of Steve’s sweat and Tony’s blood mingling in his mouth.

“Now keep that there,” Steve says, satisfied that Tony won’t say a word. “You’ve said enough.”

Tony grunts in response, and Steve grabs Tony’s groin, rough. “How dare you ask me to come here under false pretenses,” he says. Tony sees white and jerks, his body responding in desperate throbs.

“How dare you accuse me of abusing my position— me, while you’re on the news every night playing fear politics against your own friends, signing your soul away in blood—” he pins both of Tony’s wrists above his head and holds them there easily with one hand; with his other hand, he tears Tony’s underwear off, the fabric splitting apart at the seams, cold air rushing to Tony’s hot skin. “Don’t move.”

The pinnacle of degradation, Tony obeys, perfectly still aside from his heaving chest as Steve ties his wrists together with own used underwear.

“There,” Steve says.

There, Tony thinks. 

Steve wastes no time pushing Tony’s legs apart and leaning between them. Heat pours off him in waves, a micro tropical climate. A strangled moan rips out of Tony’s throat through his gag as Steve’s hand curls around him, and starts stroking at an aggressive pace. Tony’s body tries to move, but pinned beneath Steve’s weight with his arms bound, there’s nowhere for him to go to escape the pleasure, so brilliant that it hurts.

He had been hard already, and being handled so aggressively is like touching his dick with a live wire.

“You need this, too,” Steve whispers into Tony’s ear, and when Tony meets his eyes, a shudder runs through him. Steve’s expression flickers, hesitancy, seeking permission again, and then satisfaction. When his hand suddenly begins moving faster, Tony tries again to moan and Steve uses two fingers to shove the blue cloth deeper into his mouth, tickling the back of his throat.

Tony isn’t as young as he once was, but he feels nineteen years old when he’s with Steve. He won’t last much longer like this, but he trusts Steve to know it. They’ve had time to explore each others’ bodies, the limits of enduring pleasure and pain, in the bedroom and on the battlefield. Tony’s body weeps in anticipation, wetting Steve’s hand and causing an obscene sound as he jerks Tony. 

Steve’s free hand goes to adjust himself in his pants, which have miraculously held up against the straining at his crotch. 

Heat begins to pool, a tingle low in Tony’s stomach. Overloaded, every nerve ending lighting up with pleasure. Involuntarily, he thrashes, strains, writhes, overwhelmed by so much so fast but unbearably limited by his restraints.

And then, right at the last minute, Steve stops.

Tony makes a startled sound in the back of his throat in outrage and desperation.

“Who needs it now?” Steve says. Point well made.

But then Steve drops to his knees between Tony’s thighs. Tony quickly shuts up. 

Steve kneels there without touching him except for a gloved hand laid flat on the top of Tony’s bare thigh. Tony can’t speak around his gag, and even if he could, he wouldn’t— but he wants to beg. Every thought in his head, every feeling, has been replaced with need. 

But Steve waits, a blonde brow cocked in what could pass for amusement as he watches Tony strain and struggle, cock so hard it twitches in time with his pulse.

Lazily, Steve reaches down and unbuckles his own pants. He pulls the belt out, dropping it on the floor, and Tony can hear but not see the sound of Steve’s zipper being undone. Tony understands, now. Steve’s making him wait for it. Waiting until Tony’s body cools off enough that he won’t climax the second Steve puts his mouth on Tony. Which, fair enough— if Steve so much as breathed on Tony’s cock right now, he might lose it.

Steve starts stroking himself. The flush blooming on his cheeks, the way his perfect teeth trap his lower lips as he tips his head back in wanton pleasure, is almost enough to send Tony over the top. Live porn, a living fantasy of his hero lost in the throes of self debauchery.

Steve doesn’t keep him waiting long, though— and for a while, everything else fades away after Steve sinks down on Tony again. For a while, things are almost like they were before.

* * *

Steve unties Tony’s wrists sending the blood rushing back into his hands. Tony pulls the cowl out of his mouth and the hinge of his jaw aches, overstretched. Pulling himself up into a sitting position, he rubs the deep, red marks where his bindings had pressed into the skin of his arms. 

Steve watches him from a few paces away, mouth pressed into a straight line. He crosses his arms over his the star on his chest, still fully dressed except for his own loose belt and fly, but he’s sweaty and reeking of their sex.

He looks unhappy with himself, tight shoulders and guilt in his eyes.

“Are you okay?”

Tony looks up, and he nods. “Just a little red. Nothing to worry about.”

Steve looks unsatisfied. “Your lip’s still bleeding, right there.”

“I was doing it on purpose, you know.” Tony uses his ruined underwear to wipe his own sweat and mess off his chest, “Making you mad. Egging you on. I didn’t mean the stuff I said.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t have— if it was real, it would have been different,” Steve says, and then turns away to dress himself. He says, as he zips his pants, “You were saying what you thought I wanted to hear.”

“I was being cruel,” Tony says, lower. “Manipulative.” It’s as close as he comes to an apology.

“I know.” It’s as close as Steve comes to forgiving him.

“And you wanted that?” Tony asks. 

Steve goes still a moment, and then quietly does up his belt. “Not any more than you wanted me to be cruel to you.”

Tony snorts. “I’d hardly call it cruelty.” He tosses aside the wet underwear, and he’s still glowing a healthy, post-orgasmic pink.

“I wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t like how we used to. I was—” Steve swallows. “Angry.”

“I know,” Tony says, mimicking Steve gently.

“It helped. Well. For a minute.”

The gold under suit cleaves to every dip and hollow of Tony’s body as he dresses. “But it doesn’t change anything, does it?” 

He tries not to let the bitterness of disappointment bleed into his voice, with little success. He had never expected sex to fix things, but he’d hoped maybe it would change things. He imagines the taste of his blood on Steve’s lips again, and thinks, we’ll kill each other. If this war isn’t diverted, it’ll be scorched earth. Pyrrhic victory.

He wonders if Steve can see it like Tony can, harbinger of death, train track heading for a fixed destination. _You stupid, moralistic martyr. Don’t let me wreck you. I won’t survive it._

Any win, without him, will always be a loss.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “But I’m glad we—”

“Me too.”

“You know this can’t happen again.”

“It won’t.”

Tony’s chest tightens; he knows. He knows. He knows. The next time they see each other, things will be different. It will be as though their little détente had never happened, by the time the haze of endorphins and tangled affections clears and they remember what they hate so much about each other. There will be more blood, and resentment, and probably bodies, and it’ll end with handcuffs and armored cars, if Tony gets his way.

Best case scenario. Tony doesn’t let himself think about the worst case scenario now, with the smell of Steve still lingering on his skin. 

“But. You never know,” Tony says with a wistful smile on his lips, late enough to sound out of place. Fooling himself. 

Steve looks over his shoulder at him, then, eyes filled with pity, and regret, and something else. 

“Take care of yourself, Tony,” Steve says, picking up his shield from the ash-covered ground and slipping his arm through the strap. Tony re-armors, plates clicking protectively into place. All that remains is the faceplate, left off.

“Thank you,” Tony says, “For the talk.”

Something flickers in Steve’s eyes, and the sun has changed angles above; it must be sunset. Cold air, and a magenta sky. “We should have talked sooner,” he says, and Tony knows what he means.

They leave in the cover of dusk, the iron gate of the old mansion creaking as it swings closed. It’s like they were never here. In the emptiness of the street, the rusty clang of metal on metal followed by the clunk of the lock rings in Tony’s ears. No going back, now; the past sealed in the past.

Tony glances over his shoulder at Steve, one last time. He flips his faceplate down. Then they go their separate ways. 

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings/Notes
> 
> Being set during Civil War, Steve is with Sharon-- I don't personally see Steve as likely to cheat on a partner, but for the sake of changing as little as possible, and exploring the 'bitter exes' avenue of this scenario, I decided not to erase their relationship to make room for the Steve/Tony relationship; I wanted to play with the discomfort of overlapping emotional involvement and Steve as being flawed (even if more so than canonically-- though we can agree he hasn't historically been the warmest boyfriend.) If infidelity makes you uncomfortable, I'd advise you to turn back now!
> 
> Also, the sexual scenario that plays out isn't safe or sane, although it is consensual. They start out hitting each other, and end up engaging in emotionally charged, un-negotiated bondage, which isn't friendly and doesn't come with much aftercare. I want to stress that this is consensual and I have tried to imply that Steve and Tony are so familiar with one another that they're able to read each other's nonverbal cues and anticipate each other's headspaces, but I feel obliged to point out that this is fiction and would not constitute adequate consent in a real life scenario. I might be over-warning, but I'm sort of new to writing explicit sexy times and I would rather be too careful than careless.
> 
> And just in general, be aware the story takes place in a burned down mansion, references past tragedies, explosions, and deaths. There is on screen violence and bodily fluids, including blood. Tony's inner monologue also gets pretty intensely self loathing at times, including rationalizing deserving punishment, violence, etc. He internally references his own past abuse briefly, justifying it as somewhat deserved, which may be triggering for some readers.
> 
> I think that covers it; I have a tendency to go long and into too much detail with these things.
> 
> ___
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you want to make my day, drop a comment or send me an ask on [my tumblr,](https://ghosthan.tumblr.com/) where I share art, edits, and comics posts. c:


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